seen from the streets of canada. showing up for asians to rule the day. a long time are going to washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. don't americans want a progressive approach when it comes to solving our nation's economic woes and why do republicans want to block americans access to health care all that and more and i had to loan liberal rumble and black friday one of the busiest and most lucrative shopping days of the year is a little over a week away will strike in walmart employees deal a blow to the bottom line of the world's largest corporation.

you need to know this they're up to it again this time with what they call the fiscal cliff where of conmen burying slogans the oldest trick in the book is for conservatives cons to create his steria around something and then get all of us to give them billions of our tax dollars to fix the problem that they've gotten us all is there are. for generations ago the right was ripping up hysteria about reefer madness that got us to spend trillions over the years incarcerating mostly poor people for a mostly victimless crime but they made a fortune doing and now they're even building private prisons to hold pot heads three generations ago the right was whipping up hysteria about communism although khrushchev never actually said we will bury you right wingers and their p.r. machine made sure every american buddy did and the red chinese are going to take down vietnam and that domino would flip over other countries from laos all the way to canada and pretty soon north dakota would be filled with commies they got us to

spend trillions over the years building nukes and having pointless wars but they made a fortune doing it and now that they're making money partnering with china they'd like us to forget that it's still officially communist country no droids in this car two generations ago the right was whipping up hysteria about taxes and regulation reagan told us that even though the decades of the fifty's sixty's and seventy's were the strongest in american history in terms of g.d.p. growth and growth of the middle class still taxes on rich people were so high and regulation of industry so bad if we didn't do something about it now then disasters would happen they got us to spend trillions giving tax breaks to billionaires and deregulated giant corporations so that they could destroy most of america's small and medium sized businesses in the great mergers and acquisitions frenzy of the eighty's and they made a fortune doing it and in this generation the right is whipping up hysteria about

our national debt they want to be afraid very afraid that because of their war on drugs and the war and communism in their war on taxes their war and regulation our country is now trillions of dollars in debt it becomes particularly ironic when they get hysterical about a program that goes into effect at the end of his year it will modestly raise taxes back to where they were when bill clinton was president half the rate when reagan came it all. this and will cut spending particularly military spending although it's not even close enough to take us back to where it was before bush called this the fiscal cliff as if it's something we would fall over the edge of and die from the crash it's all hysteria the tax increases on middle class people are easily remedied with a tax cut something republicans say they love and the spending cuts sound like a lot over a trillion dollars but that's over a ten year period that's plenty of time to go through those things and decide which is important like keeping long term unemployment benefits flowing and which can wait like building more bombs in other words the fiscal cliff is another classic

example of what naomi klein called disaster capitalism create a panic and then profit from it for example wall street is right now funding groups like a group called the third way that are pushing hard for us to give our social security trust fund which has over two and a half trillion dollars in it to goldman sachs and citibank so they can take care of it for us let's not make you all fields and feel all safe and warm and fuzzy while we have a large debt it's not as large as it was after world war two and how do we solve it the president's truman and eisenhower a democrat and republicans both realized it wasn't a cliff or a debt problem it was a jobs problem so they invested billions of dollars in sending millions of americans to college for free the g.i. bill and building and billions more in today's dollars and building highways schools and hospitals those investments paid off in more and better jobs which meant more tax payers which meant more tax revenue and as if by magic the world war

two debt was paid off in about a decade. we need to change the conversation we don't have a fiscal cliff to worry about we have a jobs cliff giant corporations and their conservative buddies have been sending our jobs overseas as fast as they can it was making the fads cat fat cats rich it's wiping out the middle class it's time for a national conversation about our insane trade policies and how we can grow real jobs not just fast food jobs no fiscal cliff or grand bargain needed let's just put americans back to work. now is turned over to this week's low liberal pap. it's wednesday are you ready to rumble join me tonight for the long liberal rumbalara dan bongino two thousand and twelve republican nominee for u.s.

senate from maryland congratulations on fighting the good fight thanks we tried great job and marc harrold libertarian commentator attorney and author thank you for coming back and to be on the program here mark great to have you both with us let's get started on this let's talk about the so-called fiscal cliff here was president obama taking the consequences of the election exceeding talking the consequences of the election on tax cuts for the rich. but this shouldn't be a surprise to everybody this was if there was one thing that everybody understood was a big difference between myself and mr romney it was when it comes to how we reduce our deficit i argued for a balanced responsible approach and part of that included making sure that the wealthiest americans pay a little bit more the majority of voters agreed with me the only question now is are we going to hold the middle class hostage in order to go ahead and let that happen. the president has doubled his demand for revenue from last year asking for

one point six trillion over ten years now here a lot of talk about a balanced approach democrats won big in last year's election still control the white house and the senate on behalf of the voters house democratic candidates also want to half a million more congressional votes in the house republican candidates it looks like a mandate to me you know. is it safe to say dan that americans did not vote for a balanced approach that they voted for for what president obama had campaigned on raising taxes on rich people well listen you know we lost let's not be foolhardy and argue the obvious i lost in my race to say no it's a mandate i think is a mandate based on. facts that are not accurate it's like saying you know a guy was convicted on bad information in courts of all the sudden the conviction should stand he president obama won by a larger percentage of the popular vote than ronald reagan did it but there was one of the new worst presidents in the last hundred years to win a second bill crystal talked about this is are you well i mean i listen are you the whole monologue in the beginning though and it's based on a faulty argument that tax rates and revenue are the same thing i'm not making an

argument to you tom that no one here should pay taxes and finance items for the collective good that's not what i'm saying but i'm telling you as republicans we fail to make an argument that there is a tax rate sweet spot they had where you would generate revenue and not stifle the economy at the same time i don't think we're there i think we're still a bit too high although i think i don't think we're there either i mean if you look at the three decade period when america had its highest sustained growth of g.d.p. and best sustained growth of the middle class it was the fifty's sixty's and seventy's when the top tax rate was ninety one percent i think that's the sweet spot right but look at the reagan rates of twenty percent when you get out we had growth rates of seven five and six so i only the last year of his administration know we had seven percent growth eighty four five percent and eighty five and for president eighty six when he dropped the tax rate below fifty percent right and he doubled tax revenue the government he came in office tax revenue to the government five hundred nine billion dollars but when he left that was at seventy percent when he cut it to twenty eight tax revenues the government was nine hundred billion well

you're including social security in that no i'm not that is tax revenue generated from the income tax specifically you can look it up in the treasury tables so this is it a lot and i would say that i would say that i would submit that that's because he took the capital gains tax from what was it eighteen percent up to twenty it was only a small portion of it ok mark first of all i want to reiterate today in an amazing campaign you ran and congratulations on that regardless of the outcome you know as far as why they lost is i don't know that you can pick out one thing you know what obama wins and you can pick out one thing and say that everything that he did is now a mandate i think there were different reasons i think that the republican party didn't associate well with the voters i think the forty seven percent. killed him and i think there is a lot of class warfare and it worked you were talking about fear earlier there's different you know fear and emotion always works in elections and i think that's what happened here but regardless of that i believe in a fair consumption tax more flat tax a fair tax i do believe that there were that tax i don't i don't really like the vat tax as well consumption to it is a type of consumption and i don't like it as much and england has one they give

them the equivalent of a twenty percent tariff on imported goods and a twenty percent subsidy for exports for germany one thousand and a half percent france is nineteen and a half percent japan it's eighteen percent i mean most of the countries they china is sixteen percent most of the countries in the world that are successful are using a vat tax as a form of tariff to protect their domestic industry i grew with them on the fact that i think that you have low what you need is lower taxes on a bigger pie that's what you need to do the lower the tax rate with a bigger pie i think what you get if you stifle the growth or reagan raised more of it from the people and then they're working for the government longer and longer and longer each year but i think we need a recipe for a new pot what i see in politics right now is this idea that we've got this finite pie we're going to fight over who pays for the spending that we've gotten ourselves into mostly because of these different complexes that we you know it's like the american complex military industrial complex the war on drugs the prison industrial complex the big spending items are things that i don't believe the majority of americans agree with anymore i think we've got ourselves into fighting wars that we don't agree with i just want it and here i don't disagree with that i'm curious dan

the your take on the the the the idea richard wolffe is out promoting this in the you could the economist that that american capitalism in the united states has been broken and it's been broken because we've allowed the capitalists to leave their normal role of being capital as being businesspeople and and basically seize control of our of our political system and thus we have now a political system that serves less than one percent less than one tenth of one percent of the population and doesn't serve anybody else and it's creating not only a crisis politically but a crisis economically and oddly enough i think that's one. area where very conservative republicans and very liberal democrats agree what we have now is not capitalism we have insider crony capitalism favored towards those who have the power and the influence in a way in my campaign experiencing big p. politics for the first time to be a secret service agent i mean seen it but not mentioning it i saw it myself those who have the money do have the power but ironically conservatives are not arguing

for you know a playing field tilted towards towards corporations i don't know how that myth got out there at least good conservatives well if they're just saying it gets it gets out there because of the way they vote in congress this some but i did mean that listen it's a bigger tend to be american conservatives like myself i don't believe these foreign wars were a good idea believe in the decriminalization of marijuana we're not all like some stereotype and i happen to agree with you that the system right now is rigged but it's rigged because of our crony it's tax code insider dealings by both parties is it isn't rigged and large part and to both of you because the supreme court has said that money is the same thing as speech i was just overwhelmed outspent fifteen if not twenty to one in my race i have personal experience with it i don't disagree that campaign finance reform has to be paramount but having seen it for myself and been a victim of it having my own skin in the game i can tell you i think at this point i think the system is rigged anyway we should eliminate the caps altogether and just focus completely on disclosure of the billionaires who believe they already do

it on both sides marca we've seconds we've argued citizens united before i think money kid money does facilitate speech i think the most important part is the other side of the case the eight to one opinion and it's transparency that really matters we've got to focus on the transparency i think you should be able to spend as much as you want but it's got to be transparent start with that i will agree with you as a starting point morris a nice long liberal right after this break. here is mitt romney trying to figure out the lame of that thing that we americans call. i don't know. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cares an awful lot but you sir are a fool you know what that is my self. want to listen to feature isn't the only liberal chris. i can see you're totally out of the.

you know the corporate media distracts us from what you and i should care about because there are profit driven industry that sells us sensationalistic garbage because that breaking news i'm happy martin and we're going to break that. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture .

of the. part about the liberal rumbalara panels and i dan bongino and marc harrold let's go back to what mitt romney blamed his loss in the presidential election on quote. and . initiatives and quote that president obama gave to young people african-americans and hispanic voters he said obama followed the old playbook his phrase of catering to specific demographics he gave specific examples for young people forgiveness of college loan interest was quote a big gift as was he said free contraceptives he said free health care was a big plus for hispanics and for african-american voters as well here's

a quote from him he said you can imagine for somebody making twenty five to thirty thousand or thirty five thousand dollars a year being told you're not going to get free healthcare it's huge as press briefings today president obama is that's the next target topic so any of this this raises the question of what is the appropriate role of government i mean the for ever since the new deal republicans have been yelling that the democrat democrats are santa clause and you know that was social security and unemployment benefits and medicare and all these kind of things and isn't in a democracy if the people vote for benefits and are willing to tax themselves to pay for it is not a legitimate function of government and no we are not a democracy where a constitutional republic that was designed exactly to prevent you spending my money without my permission you're going to say that the constitution article one section eight clearly lays out the powers of the senate the legislator erst says the first sentence of article one section eight says in part that the powers to tax

and spend are to fulfill the purpose of the general welfare of the country the last sentence of article one section eight repeats that if you go back to alexander hamilton is report on manufacture section twenty one of his report on manufacturers seven hundred ninety three when he was the secretary of the treasury in washington the ministration he was one of the guys in the room when they wrote the constitution he said we use the word general welfare because to use anything less vague would be to unnecessarily limit congress' how is student loans general welfare but if we have a well educated populace it works to the better. that of all of america so with my point though we disagree so it's obviously not general welfare it's your genocide my general welfare general welfare you don't think that i don't treat is better off if we have a what you don't think the g.i. bill helped it worse but the point is those are education you could make that argument we'd all be better if we ate broccoli does that mean we tax people who don't eat broccoli and who choose to eat beef jerky i mean the point of the general

welfare clause was actually you know we do a variation on that we tax people used to back right which because it's because this is a public expense associated with no that's different i don't necessarily agree with prohibitive sin taxes either if you were to make something legal make it legal and tax it out of existence that so that's a different argument to be made i don't agree with that i did she actually was making my point my point is that taxation written into article one section eight you numerated power is written for public goods are military and things like that and well here's what here's the first line of article one section eight congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes duties in posts in excises to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the united states but all duties imposts and excises should be uniform throughout the united states which is why it's late there and like you said hamilton i mean the jews aren't general welfare shows up twice once it's more aspirational preamble and it's not a so it's not aspirational it's definitional but the supreme court has held that here's why we created this country know that the supreme court has said that it's not it's not a way to root substantive law you can't use it like the commerce clause but at the

current theory and pretty hard says the first call was in the court that said it it was one of the justices of the court that said i've seen that quote i would repeat again well there's track of the radical different places where that's there you don't think it's a pretty court has repeatedly up held general welfare and in fact the most famous case was in what thirty seven social security ok well the thirty seven case which set us on the road obviously was where they start to lay off the commerce clause that was that switch in time where the new deal would never been able to exist without laying off the commerce allowing the commerce clause to expand and let those laws be re and general welfare is a that it's not a you can't route just you can't just pass along. say it's for the general welfare it has to be based on some other constitutional precepts doesn't just the general welfare it does does it's a limit it's more of a limitation on taxes but you can't just root it general welfare to usually coupled with the commerce clause is odd because unless we're thinking of different cases the case law if i understand what science is not some of it i'm not referring to specific supreme court case and. you know there's laws passed all the time that

don't reference any cost but there's no reason but there are other than i've ever seen partners or taxing power unless i'm getting confused that the tax the taxing power for the general welfare but i don't believe you can just route a law entirely in general welfare it's going to be in the tax it's going to be a tax law to the general welfare that it's welfare as well right isn't an actual it's a tax lower combers along the limit limit on government the limit is what thomas jefferson said when one when spencer rowan asked him well if the supreme in after the marbury vs madison case nine hundred three and he said you know if the supreme court is not going to have the say in what the constitution means who does and jefferson said the people themselves the limit is that when when when congress goes crazy you said were a democrat were a republican constitutional republic actually we're we're a constitutionally limited representative democratic republic because and i say democratic because it's majority rule and so if we reach the point where our elected officials are not doing what we want we vote them out there but didn't do

that in two thousand and ten i mean we people act as if the democratic liberal wing of the party is had this mandate for five decades to spend their money they were routed in one thousand nine hundred they were routed in one thousand nine hundred four they were routed in two thousand and ten they were routed in two thousand and four when we shouldn't have been because frankly we didn't run a conservative republican again for no matter how you know how you are we could we could debate all of those points but if you ask americans do you think we should have social security do you think we should have unemployment benefits you think we should have medicare do you think we should have free public education you think we should have free. college like we used to have before ronald reagan all across the united states or in many places it is certainly california is out for people say yes what are you willing to pay taxes for people say yes you are and you're willing to say yes well the majority the vast majority so you think you should be able to exit for that and all of our money yes i think redeploy i think we're all in on this. really more when there are these then we should reserve you using force to

take my money should be reserved for areas of mass consensus i'm telling you you don't have the sixty five percent of americans in the exit polling after the last election so they thought the taxes should go a good forty nine percent of americans don't like obamacare so you're telling me that fifty one percent of america should be able to buy force take forty nine percent of america's money because you've declared it a mandate well that's how it works though they've done that so i don't that's a you know that is that was reagan said the same thing he said ok by force we're going to take a trillion dollars from people's money going to their head we're going to a trillion dollars and we're going to give it to three or four corporations who are going to do the star wars thing for us that never did and never went anywhere and that would be if we can you can choose to get rid of you guys that it is your allies we were always about you want to. do ok at a press briefing today president obama. you know i'm sorry as the scale surrounding general petraeus continues to unfold no wait a minute this. is it jumped or gallon i'm just going to read this from this paper at his press briefing today president obama lashed out at senators john mccain and

lindsey graham for their bows to block u.n. ambassador susan rice from becoming the secretary of state should she be nominated take a listen the president's statements. as i've said before she made an appearance at the request of the white house in which she gave her best understanding of the intelligence that had been provided to her if senator mccain and senator graham and others want to go after somebody they should go after me. and i'm happy to have that discussion with you but for them to go after the u.n. ambassador who had nothing to do with benghazi. and was simply making a presentation based on intelligence that she had received and as the smirch her reputation. these outrageous well shortly after the president finished his

remarks senator graham released a statement saying mr president don't think for one minute i don't hold you ultimately responsible for a magazine i think you failed as commander in chief before during and after the attack we owe to the american people in the victims of this attack to have full fair hearing hearings and accountability be assigned where appropriate given what i now know i have no intention of promoting anyone who is up to their eyeballs in the big ozzy debacle graham has been very vocal in attacking president obama over been gaza but where was he on nine eleven where were the hearings on nine eleven into bush's intelligence failures you know five different major allies including israel the kingdom and russia telling us hey this thing is coming you know the cia flying a guy down in august to warnings as early as may to george w. bush this is coming and he never ever convened his national security team to talk about i can't answer for lindsey graham but i'm a i'm a libertarian leaning republican i'm not in the president is duly elected he won

fair and square yes a right to nominate he wants and the senate has the right to confirm or not confirm . but i think it's a mistake and i think we need to look at our you know at ourselves in the mirror as a country in a nonpartisan fashion and say you know what susan rice did inject herself into the benghazi situation by becoming the public face of it shouldn't have to she's her own free will to say i'm not going to say that they put out on their facebook page a.q.i.m. in the ok to the magreb the next day right after it excuse me the same day that they were responsible taking credit for the attacks but it's not a part of this they make this a they and thirty other groups you know what tom that's fine me see if me and you don't know right now why we see she she's so sure it was the video and feel free to go on the national i mean it's a very calm exchanges it was simply conveying the information that was given to her by the cia and the state well she should check facebook first because anyone else could have. well first of all she's not jay carney she's not a press secretary she doesn't just go on convey information to people watching believe that she has firsthand knowledge of what's going. given her high position i

don't think that she should be slandered i don't think that anything should be said that isn't true but i believe that those two senior senators have every right if that is somebody that the president wants to move into a different position and the senate is properly constitutionally inject in that process they have every right to ask her any question they want about something the american people want why with those wires why were senators mccain and graham not demanding investigations into the intelligence failures that led to nine eleven well i can't answer that i mean we could say hypocrisy we can say i just don't know but on the other hand i want to do it live yes i must say this is a sabbatical isn't this politico isn't this the point you know last night on on hannity apparently or maybe today on his radio show the word impeachment came i mean this is the it's the this is this is what republicans do to democrats their second term to impeach them i predict that this is going to be you know fox's jim in this thing up the right wing machine over the i did the hannity show today on the radio and but there are some questions to be asked when we lost our ambassador

and three other patriots you know either of i'm not so i'm not mentioning two of them security guards yeah i'm just you know yeah i know what they do i spent some time in afghanistan doing a dance for president obama and that team of guys that are usually retired special forces folks these guys go there they work about six months out of the year they put themselves in the highest threat situations and they lose people all the time these guys were heroes there are some very common sense questions i was a secret service it just from a tactical perspective why would the g.a.o. locating a mortar site if there wasn't an expected reinforcement to come in and save them it doesn't make sense of the words pointing out an enemy who are they pointing it out these are all questions that it's entirely appropriate for congress to be looking into in a rational way but this is this is a witch hunt oh i don't disagree that there is definitely a political witch hunt to really going on you're not wrong and i think we as republicans should come out and take a deep breath as democrats should when they do it to us but where there are questions of dan bongino marc harrold thank you both for joining things. after years of abuse and low wages workers

a wal-mart of had enough as another group of boys goes on strike this world's largest corporation and for quite a shock come black friday and our walmart employee is in the driver's seat when it comes to the fight for better working conditions.

and. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harvey welcome to the big picture.